Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives, such as product sales, through self-replicating processes involving the automated reproduction of multiple copies of data objects. Viral marketing can enable a business to enlarge its customer/user base or services at low acquisition costs. Furthermore, inviting new users or sending the application to new users can be done directly via a mobile application, the interne, etc. Viral distribution, as used herein, refers to distribution techniques using phonebooks or contact lists to distribute information, such as text messages, image messages, computer applications, mobile phone applications, etc., through self-replicating viral processes.
U.S. application Ser. No. 10/925,896, by Persson et al, provides a method and corresponding equipment by which software from a first device is distributed to a second device and possibly also a server. The software has provision for exchange of information between devices sufficient for the first device to determine whether it includes or stores a version of the software compatible with the second device, which if so is sent to the second device, and otherwise exchanges information with the second device sufficient for the second device to obtain a copy from the server. Similarly, U.S. Patent Application 20060048141, by Campbell provides a person to person mobile phone game distribution service that allows a person who has a mobile phone game or other application installed on their phone to send the game to someone else's mobile phone by building into the game the ability to send a link via using SMS, MMS or other messaging protocol. Both applications provide methods for distributing an application from one mobile device to another single device. However in neither case is there provision for mobile phone application distribution to multiple phone devices. Obvious solutions to such distribution scenarios are obviated due to various hidden difficulties, such as the fact that multiple versions of a given application are generally required for use with various different mobile phone models, which in general utilize different hardware and operating systems, necessitating different software versions for each different phone. This imposes software version complexity and constrains the methods of application distribution; for example, the end-user usually provides the phone brand and model via another communication means such as fixed Internet connection, call representative or IVR, a physical visit to a retail location, etc. Only then the mobile application provider provides the user with an appropriate version of a given application that will operate correctly on the user's mobile phone. Furthermore the end-user or service provider usually does not directly send or transfer the application to another new user due to the fact the new user must in some way indicate the phone brand and model he owns via some means.
A related problem is that many advanced mobile phone users have limited or no PC access. As of the beginning of 2009, 2.4 billion people use. Internet-enabled mobile phones. In comparison, 1.3 billion people have access to the Internet via personal computers (PCs). This indicates that there are at least 1.1 billion people that have no net-enabled PC access but do have Internet-enabled mobile phones. This constitutes a large ‘invisible’ market for mobile applications (including software, clients, and the like, hereinafter referred to as “mobile applications”) such as software to make VoIP, or local calls, send SMS, Instant Messaging (IM), send photos and files, play games, use maps, find locations of other users, or any of the plethora of other mobile applications now being devised in this fecund, protean field of innovation. Users of mobile applications are required by the applications providers to access the Internet via PC (or to call a phone representative/IVR or to attend retail location, etc.) in order to open accounts, invite/receive invitations to/from other users, send mobile applications, make payments, check account costs and balances, set various options, etc.
A final, intimately related issue is the limited portability of many web applications. Most mobile phones today support the Java platform/virtual machine, which in principle provides a common environment for running games and other applications on mobile phones (and other embedded devices, PDAs, TV set-top boxes, printers, etc.). There are many mobile phones manufacturers: Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, LG etc., that ostensibly support a unified standard version of Java, but due to the fact that each manufacturer uses a different OS (operating system), different UI (user interface), different GUI (graphical user interface), different drivers for each functionality, etc., for each mobile device or for each series of mobile devices, the realization of the Java virtual machine in each device may in fact be sensibly different from other realizations, and as a result there are differences in Java functionality on various mobile devices models, both in terms of results of different functions and availability of different functions.
Hence, mobile application/software developers need to fit the mobile application to the various models or series by creating a different version of the application for each model, which require constant development and maintenance resources and effort to comply with new phone models which are launched into the market frequently. There is therefore a need and it would be advantageous to have a universal application that will run on substantially all Java enabled mobile phones or devices, and a means for distribution of such, preferably using viral means that does not require PC access.